" We will wander away 

 Over forest and glen, 

 As far as we may 



From the gentlemen," 



whose agricultural improvements^ scarifiers, clod-crushers, and all other ingenious machines for making a 

 thorough change in the constitution of mother earth, are so many engines of destruction and oppression to 

 them, while a meal of guano is an abomination inexpressible. Our present companion, however, A. acute- 

 sqnamosus, is quite of a different way of thinking; the compost-enriched kitclien-garden was the habitat it 

 selected on one occasion, on another the churchyard, among graves. We have depicted it, as it has 

 recurred for two seasons, at the foot of a raspberry stake ; being out of the reach of a spade, among the 

 raspberry briars, it will probably continue to appear in due season, for the white threads, or spawn, attached 

 a considerable mass of earth to its bulb, and all Agarics which thus propagate themselves continue to do 

 so while the ground is undisturbed. 



Fairies, connected with funguses by many legends, have also fled away before human encroachments. 

 " Speed the plough " was an anathema to them as well as to the fi-agile tokens of their footsteps. A lin- 

 gering faith in " the good people " may survive in the wilds of Connaught. . . " Stop ! how many years 

 is it since a general belief in fairies prevailed in the rural districts of enlightened England?" "Surely not 

 within a couple of hundred years." " Well, then, I will tell you a tale to the contrary. There are, 

 near Buckingham, in the parish of Thornboro' (barrow), two very large barrows. About forty years ago, 

 the farmer who rented the field which enclosed one of these, attempted to ' plough it down,' but as often 

 as the share touched the base of the mound, the horses started, plunged, broke their gear, and went 

 kicking off, as no plough-horse ever did before, except poor Pegasus when they yoked him. After 

 many attempts to carry his point, always attended with similar results, the farmer was giving up the 

 attempt to level the obstacle which stood in his way, as ' a bad job,' when a neighbour said, ' Why, don't 

 you know the fairies have shut themselves up in them hills ? it's they skear the horses ; put a pan of new 

 milk to-night where they plunged and kicked so, and you may work as hard as you like in the morn- 

 ing.' The pan was set, was found next morning emptied of its contents, and merrily the team worked 

 away all that day ; but never afterwards were they allowed to proceed unless the dole of a gallon of 

 new milk had been paid overnight. Winter set in, the roads were execrable, the farmhouse a mile 

 and a half off, and at last the good man thought he was paying dearly for the privilege of ' ploughing 

 down the barrow." " From this barrow the Duke of Buckingham afterwards obtained, among other spoUa, 

 a most beautiful bronze urn, which formed part of the Mediseval Art Exhibition ; so the fairies must have 

 relaxed from their vigilance. But the country-people still say " no luck attends the man who opens a 

 barrow :" in some districts it is difficult to obtain labourers to do it, as they believe that any casual hurt, 

 thus received, will never heal ! 



It is remarkable that barrows, all over the United Kingdom, are placed under fairy gu^dianship ; and 

 fortunate it is, for this faith has, doubtless, saved many an ancient sepulchre from destruction. But it 

 was not merely as places of burial, that a curse was supposed to rest upon whosoever rifled them ; the boys 

 who ruthlessly defaced the inscription on the altar-tomb in the village churchyard by their peg-tops, would 

 have shrunk from plucking a daisy on the " fairy" mound. Paganism remains in villages and village 

 customs, above all in village holidays, but we should scarcely have supposed that even in the rudest, most 

 unlettered districts it should have retained a deeper hold on ignorant veneration than anythijig that has su- 

 perseded it ! " Did you ever meet the man who saw the fairy ? I do not mean in Ireland, I know Crofton 

 Croker's legends, but in England ? " Yes, I knew a bold keeper, who when on his midnight rounds saw 

 a grand supper spread under Puck's oak, in Whittlebury Forest ; self-invited, yet most hospitably treated, 

 aH,went merrily, but in the morning he awoke, with stiffened limbs, which never obeyed his wiU again. It 

 would have been heinous infidelity to doubt that this misfortune was not a " fairy stroke." 



